Perry Harrison has seen many changes in the monument business during the past 30 years. The biggest change has been the use of new technology and computer automation to help create monuments that are more personalized. Now Harrison Monuments is adopting another new technology to help reduce the time involved in digging monument foundations.

Harrison Monuments, based in Warsaw, Ill., was founded in 1963 by Wilber Harrison, Perry’s father. Wilber sold monuments out of a catalog for a local monument supply company in addition to his full-time job working for the Illinois highway department. In 1968, Wilber decided to leave the highway job and concentrate full time on the monument business. So he purchased a building and started out on his own. The business rapidly grew, and in 1977 Perry joined the company. At the time the company had one kind of stone in inventory; today they have more than 300 stones in stock.

“We can do so much more with stone today compared to 30 years ago,” says Perry Harrison, president of Harrison Monuments. “Before, a person would come in and they’d tell us the name and dates and we’d give them a flower design to put on the stone and that was it.  Now we personalize everything with portraits, poems and family history. Stones today reflect the individual’s life.”

Customer introduces a new method
While the technology to design and engrave stones has changed, so has the installation method. In the past digging the foundation for a monument was a backbreaking job.

“It typically took two men about one hour to excavate a hole 3 feet deep and as wide and long as the size of the monument,” says Harrison. “This included moving the dirt from the site in a wheelbarrow to a truck or tractor and loader for transport to the cemetery dirt-dump area.”

In a typical week, Harrison and his crew will dig 15 foundation holes. So, Harrison began looking for alternative ways to dig the foundation holes that would save time and reduce his labor costs.

Harrison tried a compact excavator and backhoe, but discovered maneuverability was an issue depending on the location of existing stones in a cemetery. Then a customer, who had recently lost a family member, began asking questions about the installation process.

“He was just curious about the process,” says Harrison. “Come to find out he worked in the telecommunications industry and began to explain how a vacuum excavator worked. So we jumped on the Internet and went to the Vermeer Web site to see the unit he had purchased.”

So Harrison contacted Vermeer Midwest in Aurora, Ill., and they brought down a McLaughlin V500 vacuum excavator for a test.

“We dug the first foundation in under 20 minutes and the second took only 12 minutes. It was amazing how fast the unit worked,” says Harrison.

Vacuum Excavator 101
Actually, you can think of vacuum excavators as one big wet-dry vacuum. Vacuum excavators are self-contained units that use pressurized air or water to displace spoil and a pump to remove the displaced spoil. The displaced dry or wet spoil is stored in a holding tank on the vacuum. Vacuum excavators can be mounted to a trailer or the back of a truck and range in capacity from 100 to 1200 gallons (379 to 4542 L).

Vacuum excavators have traditionally been used to remove soil in an effort to visually identify underground utilities before major excavation work or to clean storm-water catch basins.

There are two types of vacuum excavators — air and water. Water-based units typically dig faster through a wide variety of spoil types and reduce the volume of the displaced material. These units move more displaced wet spoil into a holding tank than an air system. However, the displaced spoil is wet and cannot be returned to the site immediately without drying. While spoil from air systems can be directly returned to the site, these systems do not cut as well in hard ground conditions, such as clay. Some manufacturers offer the advantages of both systems in one package, which allows the user to decide if wet or dry excavation is best, based on the project at hand.

Creativity saves the day
Harrison chose a water-based system because it is more versatile in dealing with the varying soil conditions he faces in his 120-mile trade area. The downside — only seven of the 100 cemeteries he works with allow Harrison to unload the wet soil in their dirt-dump area. So Harrison used his creativity and common sense to come up with a solution.

“We always take our tractor to each site in order to place the 400 to 500 pound foundation cap over the foundation hole,” says Harrison. “So we mounted an 18-inch auger on the back of our tractor and used it to punch three 3-foot holes in the ground where the foundation would be placed.” 

The soil from the auger has a crumb texture and is removed by the vacuum excavator. Then Harrison uses the water pressure to cut and square the corners. The resulting mud slurry or spoil is removed from the hole via the vacuum excavator. When the vacuum excavator tank is emptied at the cemetery dirt-dump area, the spoil looks like a dry dirt pile with small pockets of mud in it, which Harrison can dump in any cemetery. 

Another advantage of the vacuum excavator comes into play in areas with a high water table.

“We’ve been fortunate around here with the dry weather the past 10 years,” says Harrison. “However, the wet spring of 2008 caused problems with water entering the foundation hole. There were cases of water entering the hole as fast as we were digging. With the vacuum exactor we can just suck up the water and mud and keep the hole clean.”

Once the foundation hole is excavated, Harrison fills it with concrete and then the foundation cap is placed over the wet concrete. The cap is a four-inch piece of granite the size of the foundation hole that sets right down on the wet concrete. The stones are placed on top of the cap.
 
Resets in a fraction of the time
Harrison found another use for the McLaughlin vacuum excavator. Every year, Harrison and his crew will spend three to four weeks resetting stones. The foundations under these stones have settled or crumbled, allowing the stones to lean and potentially fall over, making them a safety hazard.

In the past, Harrison used a half shovel to hand-dig an 8-inch-wide by 3-foot-deep trench around the old foundation. Depending on the size of the foundation it could take an hour or more to complete.

With the vacuum excavator, Harrison simply cuts a trench around the foundation using the water pressure from the machine and vacuums up the mud slurry. Once the trench is excavated chains are placed around the foundation and it is lifted out of the hole.

“The process only takes about 15 minutes,” says Harrison. “It’s much faster and another reason I purchased the vacuum excavator.”

Saving time and money
Harrison isn’t shy about sharing how the vacuum excavator will help save time, but he realizes the machine will help save money as well.

“Instead of going out and digging three foundations and pouring them in a day, we plan to dig 10 to 15 holes one day and then go back and fill and cap them over the next two days,” says Harrison. “What normally would take a week to complete will now only take three days.”

In fact, Harrison believes the vacuum excavator will reduce his labor costs by up to 16 hours per week. and that’s more than enough to help pay for the vacuum excavator.